Anti-U.S. Mobs on Rampage

Protests Flare From South Asia to North Africa, in Challenge for American Policy

Demonstrations sparked by an anti-Muslim video that started in Egypt this week spread across parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East on Friday. Meg Coker, Adam Horvath and Farnaz Fassihi join The News Hub with the latest. Photo: AP.

By

Jay Solomon and

Carol E. Lee

Updated Sept. 14, 2012 8:05 p.m. ET

Anti-American demonstrations spread to more than a dozen nations across the Islamic world Friday, with protesters storming the U.S. embassy and an American school in Tunisia and a mob in Sudan attacking the British and German embassies as well.

The broadening of this week's protests, sparked by a video made in the U.S. that mocked the Prophet Muhammad but fueled in many places by organized extremists, left three dead in Tunisia, according to police, and dozens injured in protests from South Asia to northern Africa.

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Marines at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., carry the remains of Americans killed in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Tuesday.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

In Tunisia, considered a moderate Muslim country and the birthplace of the wave of revolutions that hit the region starting nearly two years ago, the mob that stormed the embassy brought down the American flag and raised the black flag common to militant Islamic movements. American flags also were burned in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria and Bangladesh. After a second day of attacks on the American diplomatic compound in Yemen, the U.S. said it was sending 50 marines to secure the facility in the capital, San'a.

The regional furor, coming just three days after an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other workers, underscored Washington's diminished ability to influence a region where a number of governments newly elected during the so-called Arab Spring have minimal control over their restive populations.

In many cases, the political leaders and security forces within these new governments have proved unwilling, or incapable, of challenging the protesters and radical Islamist groups that have gained greater license to take to the streets.

Map: Middle East Unrest

Timeline: Past Attacks

U.S. officials worked to dampen the outrage, and pointed to several areas where U.S. diplomatic pressure seemed to have contained some demonstrations. The White House praised Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and Libya's leadership for taking steps to restore order after protests on Wednesday in which a mob overran the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, and the attack in Libya.

President Barack Obama also sent a personal message to Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, asking for help, while Vice President Joe Biden called his counterpart in Sudan Friday to stress the importance of protecting U.S. diplomats there, the White House said.

"Our focus isn't on an expectation that we can immediately bring an end to the protests," said Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes. "It's on how can we most effectively manage that situation, protect our people and lower the temperature so this is peaceful, then it passes."

But with an election less than two months away, the administration faced growing questions about its policy in the Middle East, just a week after a buoyant party convention in which Democrats touted the president's national security agenda.

Republican nominee Mitt Romney, for one, has seized on the unrest to charge that the White House didn't understand the forces being unleashed by the rebellions that have gripped the region since last year, and should have been much more aggressive to try and fashion regimes that were secular and pro-West in their orientation.

"The political question for the president is: Do undecided voters look at this and say, 'This is evidence of a president who doesn't have things under control?'" said James Lindsay, of the Council on Foreign Relations. "Or do undecided voters look at it and say, 'This is a part of the world that is out of control and it's best that the United States not be involved' ?"

Related Video

A march through Cairo's Tahrir Square to protest a video considered insulting to Islam turned violent on Friday, with protesters setting fires and throwing rocks over a wall protecting the U.S. Embassy. Video by WSJ's Matt Bradley via #WorldStream.

Several hundred Sudanese stormed into the German Embassy in Khartoum, setting part of an embassy building aflame Friday, Sept. 14. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle condemned the attack. (Video: AP/Photo: Getty Images)

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense KT McFarland joins The News Hub with analysis on the turmoil in the Middle East.

Some 200 demonstrators gathered outside the U.S. Embassy in London on Friday, Sept. 14, to vent their anger over a anti-Islam film. (Video/Photo: AP)

Some analysts saw big challenges in pressing figures such as Mr. Morsi, Mohamed Magariaf, president of Libya's General National Congress, and Yemen's leader, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, to cooperate given deeply ingrained anti-American attitudes in their populations.

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President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton at Friday's ceremony.
Reuters

"President Obama can lean on Morsi and others, but the situation on the ground has moved beyond that," said Steven Cook, an author on the Arab Spring and expert on Egypt. "Morsi doesn't fully control the levers of power."

U.S. officials argued that the unrest this week was not an indictment of overall American foreign policy, but focused on the outrage caused by the Internet circulation of the low-budget video, "Innocence of Muslims," which the White House has attacked for having a strongly anti-Islamic message.

"The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a ceremony honoring the four dead U.S. officials. "Reasonable people and responsible leaders in these countries need to do everything they can to restore security and hold accountable those behind these violent acts."

Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt have called for the administration to apologize for the video, a step the White House has flatly refused to take.

Many Arab diplomats and Mideast analysts said Washington is no longer dealing with governments that are capable of controlling their populations through fear spread by vast intelligence services and arbitrary detentions. They also said that so many political forces have been unleashed in countries like Egypt, Yemen and Libya that the new leaders are constrained by domestic factors.

That's vastly different from the situation when Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali were in power last year.

Mr. Morsi, the new leader of the Arab world's largest country and one of the U.S.'s closest regional allies, is seen as the exemplar. The Obama administration was incensed by his failure to disrupt Tuesday's attack on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and his unwillingness to initially condemn the violence in Benghazi. Instead, he initially spoke only against the airing of the American-made film.

After a phone call with Mr. Obama, Mr. Morsi did speak out against the violence on Thursday But hard-line Islamist forces, led by the Salafi movement, continued protesting Friday. Egypt analysts say the Salafis and others are seeking to weaken Mr. Morsi and limit his ability to raise international support to strengthen his government.

Libya's government also is viewed as being limited by domestic forces in its ability to act. The government in Tripoli is viewed as perhaps the most secular to emerge from the Arab Spring and as the most pro-Western. U.S. investigators probing the attack in Benghazi increasingly believe the assault was led by Salafis or a militant group with ties to al Qaeda.

Longer term, U.S. diplomats and analysts say the State Department will have to intensify efforts to build bridges among the broader populations in these Arab countries. They fear, though, that this week's unrest could lead lawmakers to pull back from engaging the Mideast's new governments.

The late ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, a fluent Arabic speaker, was held up by some as an example for his commitment to reaching out to all sectors of Libyan society. Some said his brand of diplomacy risks dying with him.

"Chris was all about going into the streets," said Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who worked with Mr. Stevens in Syria. "And he knew the risks."

Corrections & Amplifications Mohamed Magariaf is the president of Libya's General National Congress, currently the country's head of state. He was misidentified as Libya's president in an earlier version of this article.

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